Sunday 2 November 2008

A weekend in Crawley, chez M's folks, and with it, a welcome change of running scene. Two decent outings to report, both along the leaf-strewn Worth Way.

On Saturday, a gritty 6½ miler in torrential rain; the sort of stuff against which you cannot protect yourself, except by staying indoors in front of a roaring radiator. Then today, a shorter version of the same.

Yesterday's was a difficult run, but eventually gave me cause for optimism. After breakfast, I'd nipped out to get my athletic apparel from the car, noting the dark grey Sussex sky and the chill in the air. Not a great combination for the runner. It gave me little enthusiasm for the task, but ducking out wasn't an option.

I got togged up in the ceremonial garb, then waited a further hour for the muesli and yoghurt to descend to a safe level. Only when satisfied that the desiccated grub had left the volatile stomach area, and was beginning its long wriggle through the intestines, did I zip up my jacket and leave the house.

Running on a Saturday feels different from a Sunday. More people on the streets, and there's something more purposeful about their demeanour. To plod past them on the pavement seems rather insolent, as though I'm trespassing on their personal zeitgeist, and somehow trivialising their very existence. They had to tolerate me for a few hundred yards only. After that, I was off the street and onto the bridleway, where almost immediately I was faced with a fork in the path. As always, I took the road less travelled, and as always, it was the wrong option. I ended up, a half mile later, threading my way through a subdued housing estate with nothing for entertainment but puddle splashes, and a distant, mournful car alarm. No option but to retrace my steps, and take the other branch of the fork. It was still bucketing down, so I had to watch my footing on the deep carpet of sodden, fallen leaves. All I could think of was how much beautiful leaf compost was going to waste here.

Earlier in the day, I'd been reading Runner's World magazine; some bland article about listening to music while running. It did set me thinking again. I shouldn't rely on it so much. It's a personal thing. Other people must do what's right for them. But for me, it sometimes seems like a cop out. I'll change my mind again in a day or two, but just for now, I'm enjoying getting down and dirty with the damp leaves and the rabbits.

The conditions turned much of the run into a slog, but it was a good experience, and refreshing to be in a new landscape. The pleasantly rural trail took me through fields and woodland, and the odd farm. A mile or so from the end, I suddenly had that bouncy feeling that I used to get, and which I've not felt for probably well over a year. It's a sense that you're not dragging your body along the path, but something like the opposite. It lasted just a half mile or so, but it was enough to produce a grin, despite the filthy weather.

Today, I did a shorter version of the same run, this time in dry, sunny weather: warm enough to forgo the jacket. The legs were a little weary after yesterday, but I got through the 4 miles easily enough. That makes a weekly total of 19 miles, plus nearly 3 hours in the gym. Not bad.

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Wednesday 5 November 2008

Who would have thought that Grant Park in central Chicago would give this Englishman two of his most inspirational moments? I was there in person for one of them – the start of the great Chicago Marathon; and in spirit for the other – Barack Obama's word-perfect acceptance speech, delivered just an hour or so after California turned in the seats that pushed the Democrats past the crucial 270 mark. I watched the speech live on TV, at around four-thirty this morning, overwhelmed by the sense of the moment.

Just like the speech itself, it will all end in tears. As Enoch Powell pithily remarked: "All political careers end in failure". It's hard to separate a fellow from the attractions of hope however, and this is why we persist in hailing the promise of new political eras. Does that seem unduly cynical? It's meant to sound a distant note of realism to accompany the epochal hyperbole, and the universal clamour surrounding Barack's beatification. I am as desperate as anyone for his presidency to succeed, but I worry that expectations may have risen to an impossible altitude. And the greater the hope, the greater the potential disappointment. It's unlikely to be Obama's personal qualities that will be his undoing – he appears to be as sure-footed a politician as I have witnessed in a long time. But it's hard not to worry about the consequences of conservative bitterness. Someone will be on hand to leap on every lapse; to ridicule and distort every policy movement and conjure up scary extrapolations.

Despite the inevitability of all that, I'm determined to enjoy the moment for as long and as far as I can stretch it. And even if Obama eventually crashes and burns, as nearly all politicians must, the very fact of his ascendancy, and his achievement in persuading more than 50% of voters to put a black man in the White House, is something that will never be undone or rewritten. The genie of personal awareness and self-confidence is out at last, and can never be pushed back into the bottle. The revelatory reassessment of self, and the meaning of potential, are explosive bursts of thought. Carefully managed, they have the power to liberate a generation, and to reinvent a string of cultures across the planet. Coming just a few days after Lewis Hamilton won the Formula One world championship, it's a good moment to be black. And by extension, a good moment for all of us.

This afternoon I went for a 6 mile Obama celebration run along the damp canal towpath. I needed to thrash myself a little, to clear my head and wake myself up after a long, emotional night. But it was hard to push the news from my mind. I reflected that, in the 7 years of this website's existence, we have known only the bumbling, incompetent, self-serving George W Bush as US president. Listening to McCain's dignified and gracious concession speech, and Obama's inspirational acceptance, reminded me that there are American politicians out there who can be genuinely articulate, coherent, and inclusive. Truly, I had forgotten this.

It was a pretty good run on a cool, but not cold, afternoon. I struggled a little at around mile five, but made it to 6.14 miles with just one brief walk break. As with Saturday's Sussex outing, there were stretches where I felt strong and almost agile. Almost. My weight is continuing to drop, though I won't detail it just now. I keep meaning to devote an entry to the topic of weight loss, but it seems disrespectful to pollute the sanctity of the Obama entry with an exposition on the fluctuating magnitude of my arse.

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Wednesday 12 November 2008

At last. Thank god, at last. It's all gone wrong. I was beginning to worry...

I don't know where these uninvited, anarchic impulses come from, but one arrived on Friday, mid-evening. I didn't have time to reason with myself. I just suddenly thought: "Let's go to the pub" and up I got. Five minutes later, I'm gulping a pint of the outstanding Good Old Boy from West Berkshire Brewery, and chewing a bag of salted peanuts. An hour and couple more beers later, I went home to a large plate of high-calorie moussaka, and a bottle of Chilean Cabernet.

On Saturday, full of guilt, I crept to the gym for an hour of cranky self-flagellation but evidently, it wasn't enough to drag me back to the narrow path. On Sunday, I got up full of good intentions, yet my legs were heavy and unco-operative. Eventually, in late afternoon, I togged up and ventured into the cold, grey, dismal rain. In the up times, rain is seen as a gleeful challenge. In reverse gear phases, it becomes muggle weather: nasty, cold wet stuff that makes runners miserable, just like it seems to make non-runners miserable.

I couldn't do it. Half-heartedly, I trotted up the road for a couple of hundred yards, but it just wasn't going to happen. As the wind whistled, and sprayed cold water around my bare ankles. I slunk back home, a beaten man. I got changed before slipping off to the pub in the darkness.

On a runless Monday, as I sipped my post-pizza 2004 Gevrey-Chambertin, I opened my spreadsheet to survey the wreckage of my schedule. I then confronted myself with this question: Is giving up alcohol and comfort food the painful sacrifice I make in order to achieve my goal, namely running a marathon?

Or

Is training for/running a marathon, or some other notional race, the painful sacrifice I make in order to achieve my goal, namely giving up alcohol and comfort food?
I wrote the above in my little black book, before hacking a chunk from the slab of creamy Roquefort, and taking another generous sip of velvetty Burgundy. It was a great way to crash and burn. The occasional epicure in me was on cloud nine — from where he had a perfect view of the confused looking, bloated, wretched runner below.

The collapse has come at a bad time: just days before the Brighton 10K. Will I get to the start line? I really don't know. I've taken the first few steps back towards the straight and narrow, with two sweaty sessions in the gym, but I haven't had a proper run for a week now. I tried and failed on Sunday, and tried and failed on Monday. Perhaps these two days of detox and gym will get me round the block tomorrow. I'll soon find out.

So why does a brief burst of gluttony set me back so much? It's a baffling question. Admittedly, if I dabble in the dark side, I go over the top, but still... Look at the red line on this chart, which shows actual daily weight over the past 6 weeks:

Over this period, I've been ultra-careful about what I eat, and have exercised almost every day. The weight has been slowly eroded. Then look at the two circled points, where the weight shoots up. The first one, a couple of weeks ago was one single evening when I had 3 pints of beer and a Chinese takeaway (yeah, sorry, I kept quiet about it). Just 2 or 3 hours of excess, but it took 5 days to get back to where I had been. The second circle is the last few days. The rise is much steeper than the falls ever are, and I know from experience that it will take a week to 10 days to get back to where I was. It's disproportionate. Even a brief lapse gets punished. For days afterwards, I feel toxic and bloated. The very thought of pounding the streets seems to belong to some late night film I once saw, or to some other existence that is remote and unavailable. Maybe it's an age thing. It is said that recovery gets tougher as your body deteriorates. Perhaps that applies to overeating just as much as it does to long runs and other strenuous exercise.

If I wasn't due to run the Brighton 10K on Sunday, I wouldn't be so bothered. I still have almost 6 months until I arrive at the distant marathon mountains of the spring -- if that's really where I'm headed. I would write off last weekend, put it down to experience, and move on. [ASIDE: which reminds me of something heard on the radio yesterday.... "I'm on an alcohol-only diet. Last week, I lost 3 days."] But it's disappointing that after 6 weeks of serious preparation to get me back on my feet and to the Brighton start line, I find I may have blown it in the very last week.

Bah. Stop whining, mate. The last paragraph says it all. My real goals are not this weekend, but post-Christmas. I've got 3 more days to try to get a decent run on the board. If I manage that, I'll be OK for Brighton. If I don't, my life won't end.

The important thing is that I take stock of the last few days and learn the lesson.

Which of course I won't.

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Thursday 13 November 2008

I may have got away with this. A return to the rabbit diet, plus three hang-dog days of penance in the gym, silently chanting Hail Marys, seem to have dragged me back on message. This morning I felt normal again; normal enough to know that a run in the big outdoors was on the cards.

It rained all morning, just like it rained all weekend, yet today's seemed less hostile. I was reminded this week that running is about mental fitness as well as the physical sort. When the old head is right, even the rain has a smiley face.

I finally got out at about 2:30, after a frustrating morning's work -- expending a lot of effort to achieve almost nothing. I looked at something (a database structure if you really must know), and decided it needed changing. So I spent 3 hours changing it, then realised why it had been as it was in the first place. So I sheepishly changed it all back again, arriving back at precisely the spot I'd started from 5 hours earlier. A bit like a marathon, I guess.

I've had a relatively ipod-free couple of weeks, so today I opted for a spot of noise. It was a good opportunity to try out a new idea. I've learned from listening to the odd Podrunner that my favoured pace is around 155 to 160 beats per minute (bpm). Poking around under the iTunes hood the other day, I noticed that most tracks have the bpm value logged as part of their metadata (as we data bods say). It's easy enough to display the bpm and then sort all your tracks on that column to create a list ranging from the slowest (in my case, Johnny Cash singing the Beatles' In My Life)) to the fastest (The Waterboys' great And a Bang on the Ear). Funnily enough, the memories attached to both these songs mean I can't listen to either without being plunged into deep melancholy.

In a thin stratum somewhere in between these profoundly emotional extremities come about 80 or so tracks that match the required pace. It's a fascinating way of throwing together an otherwise arbitrary selection of music -- much of which I'd not heard for a while. I just copied the first 30 or so to see how I went. They included:

Bob Dylan croaking out a strangled version of Yesterday
James Taylor - Fire And Rain
Pogues - Fiesta (The Almeria song)
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem - Kelly The Boy From Killanne
Clannad - Almost Seems (Too Late to Turn)
R.E.M. - E-Bow The Letter
Bob Dylan - Thunder On The Mountain
Kings College Choir - I Saw Three Ships
James Taylor - Country Road
Cliff Richard - The Next Time
The Beatles - Good Day Sunshine
John Martyn - Easy Blues
Joni Mitchell- Both Sides Now
Jimi_Hendrix - Foxy Lady
Bob Dylan - Idiot Wind
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem - The Whistling Gypsy
Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem - Whack Fol The Diddle
Franz Ferdinand - Michael
Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary
Beth Orton - Feel To Believe
Bob Dylan - If you see her, Say Hello
Crosby Stills Nash and Young - Woodstock
Lloyd Cole - Music In A Foreign Language
The Housemartins - Think For A Minute
The Who - You Better, You Bet
Antony and the Johnsons - You Are My Sister
Joan Baez - 68
Joan Baez - Love is Just a Four Letter Word
The Beatles - For No One
King's College Choir - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

I managed only the first 8 during my 40 minute run, but it seemed to work, and they kept me tripping along at a steady cadence through the light rain. Dylan's Thunder On The Mountain was the high spot as far as running effectiveness goes. What a thumping tune that is. Shane MacGowan growling the Almeria song was the smile interlude, and how neat to finish off with the angelic Choir of King's College singing one of my favourite carols. It's confession time: I listen to Kings singing Christmas carols regularly through the year, especially when I have work I need to concentrate on. Even to a horny handed old atheist like me, nothing makes the thought of a god more tempting than the sound of a boys choir doing their thing.

You may wonder how a choir singing a Christmas carol can provide any sort of runnable rhythm. I wondered too, but as the song popped up in the slipstream of the rockier items, it was quite possible to pick up on the beat and keep it going. It might have been tougher had it been the first one.

The bpm thing is an idea I'd recommend. A great improvement over the Podrunner music, which can be a bit brutal to an old hippy like me. That said, anyone who has trouble sticking to a steady pace should play around with Podrunner: it works for me.

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Sunday 16 November 2008 - Brighton 10K

A good morning's work on the Brighton seafront -- a surreal mixture of Edwardian grandeur and kiss-me-quick frivolity. Reassuringly British.

The weather was untypically mild. I associate the Brighton 10K with razor winds whipping off the sea, and freezing rain. But today was cool and bright and dry, and for the first year I can remember, the black bin-liner remained in my pack. Worn over the head, it's normally the only thing that separates me from hypothermia as we wait for the start.

I drove down from Crawley, where I'd lodged with the in-laws. Driving into Brighton earlyish on a Sunday is to peek beneath the covers of this party town. Clumps of tottering revellers meander homewards. Only the dense traffic saved the life of one staggering kid who stepped off the kerb into the road in front of me. I braked hard and swerved to miss him. If I hadn't been forced into a 10 mph crawl, I'd have been giving a witness statement to the police rather than running the race. Reaching the front, I turned right and right again into Black Lion Street, where I parked up in the multi-storey. As usual on a race morning in any town, the car park was populated with undressing runners. In Brighton, somehow you suspect that this wouldn't raise an eyebrow on any day of the year. I left them to it, and made my way along the front to the inflated arch that marked the start and finish of the race.

The published rendezvous point was bereft of recognisable RC types, so I dumped my bag and went to join the swelling throng behind the start line. Here at last, I found the characteristically ebullient Sweder, and shortly afterwards, the mighty Nigel, running his first race since the corresponding 2007 fixture.

We went through the ritual exchange of predictions. Without shame, I admitted I'd be delighted just to finish the race without having walked. If I could manage it in under 1 hour 10 minutes, I'd be surprised and happy. This will seem unambitious, but I was being realistic. I've been back training for 6 or 7 weeks, with priorities of losing a few pounds and improving my overall fitness. Speed hasn't figured in my thoughts yet, and recent training times have only just fallen to 11-11:30 a mile.

Sweder had moved up through the starting pack to a position matching his own expectations, while Nigel and I remained at the rear. After the starting hooter, we had a 2 minute shuffle to reach the squeal of the chip mat, where Nigel bade farewell and launched himself into the heart of the two thousand runners up ahead. For 10 or 15 seconds, I watched his bobbing figure diminish until it was lost in the multi-coloured swirl of humanity in front of me.

We move east for 1.5 km before the u-turn that takes us back through the start, where I catch sight of the daunting figure of Seafront Plodder, waving a camera at me from the sidelines. It's a cheering spectacle.

For these first 3 kilometres I go through the usual "Oh dear, why am I doing this?" interrogation of myself. But then I notice my time, which shows a first mile of 10:05. What is the race magic that whips 1 or 1½ minutes off a typical mile training pace without seeming to make you feel much different from normal? Wherever it comes from, it gave me a strong morale boost.

The second mile was 10:04, and I suddenly realised how comfortable I was feeling. Instead of sinking into the usual plod, I decided to try to maintain the pace – and I very nearly managed it. Through the 6.5 km turn at Hove, and on as far as around the 8 km mark, I felt great. But here I started to weaken a little, and for the final 2 km I felt myself struggling. A couple of hundred metres from the finish, I spotted Sweder and SP, and they encouraged a sprint finish. I did up the pace a little as I headed for the line, but just 50 metres or so before it, I came across a runner lying on the ground, being attended to by anxious paramedics. It threw an uncomfortably cold bucketful of common sense over me, and I decelerated as I crossed the line in a watch time of 1:03:47, giving me an average pace of 10:16.

I met up with Nigel, and we walked up Marine Drive for a recuperative few hundred yards, accompanied by comforting post-race "how was it for you?" banter. He continued to collect his car while I did a few minutes of stretching and walked back to collect my pack from the ultra-efficient bag drop (a huge improvement on the chaotic chuck-everything-in the-back-of-a-van-and hope-for-the-best 'system' of previous years).

Passing the Jog Shop Jog apparel area, I gleefully noticed a Clif Bar sampling stall, and headed for it. I discovered Clif at the Chicago Marathon expo in 2002, and have craved their products ever since. An American company, they make the best-tasting energy bars in the civilised world. At the expo, I loaded up on as many free samples as I could get away with, and continued to enjoy them over several weeks -- even when I wasn't running. Alas, they didn't export to the UK. Until now. Check them out.

A bracing 10-15 minute walk along the seafront followed till I got to the lunch venue, the ever-welcoming Al Fresco. I like this place. It's become as important a part of the Brighton 10K as the race itself. The Italian food is beautifully presented, well-priced, and very tasty. All around us, glass, the glittering English Channel, and the happy chatter of sweaty 10K veterans. It's truly one of the happiest hours of the year. Thank you gents, and ladies.

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Saturday 22 November 2008 — 8.67 hilly miles

A perfect running day in late autumn: bright and sunny, but cold. No run is ever flawless, but today's was as good as I've had in a long time. Like Brighton last weekend, I set out with low expectations, but arrived home feeling pleasantly surprised. This could become a good habit.

If you stick at it, there seems to come a time in almost any repetitive activity when suddenly you start to get it, and pass from self-conscious, frustrated neophyte into some other identity; some interim stage on the road to expertise. As a fledgeling marathoner, I entered this happy state once or twice, though I never pushed on from there onto a higher level, preferring to adopt the behaviour of the Victorian pyramid explorers who would discover a new vault, take a quick look around, then seal it up again, intent on returning at a later date to investigate more fully. I won't ever become a running virtuoso, but I am aiming to make better progress than I've managed up till now, and with that goal in mind, today was a breakthrough.

Considering I've been plodding on and off for 7 years, including a few marathons, it's hard to explain to myself, never mind anyone else, why today's 8.67 miles can be considered so significant. It's true that I've been down this track before, but after the long break that began not just this summer, but probably on June 30 last year, or perhaps even on the day of the Zurich Marathon, 2½ years ago, I do feel that I'm almost starting all over again, even if it can never be quite the same as the first time.

We talked about this last Sunday, during out post-Brighton 10K lunch. Andy (SP) is a more extreme case than me. As far as I can recall, his plodding days fizzled out sometime after Almeria in 2005. The shock of edging in front of me at the climax of that race provided a laurel on which he has smugly reclined, glass in hand, ever since. As all readers of the forum will know, he is back in the jogging saddle, and aiming for Almeria 09 (albeit the 10K, rather than the grown-up's race). But anyway, we were agreeing that once you've done a half or a marathon, the prospect of doing another, even after a long lay-off, will never be as daunting as that first time. You've done it already, so the tension of uncertainty doesn't exist.

A caveat is that I'd like to progress further than I've managed before, so there is an element of doing something new. But that's enough of that. I've daydreamed in public too often before, so I'll leave that thought half-concealed for the moment.

Back to today. I pushed on from last Sunday's 6.2 miles to 8.67, which was heartening enough. But unusually for me, I went for the hilliest local route I could come up with. It starts with a flat 3 mile canal jaunt as a warm-up, before turning off onto the Bradfield road, where it quickly spirals up into a Loch Ness monster-style series of inclines and falls. The graphic from mapmyrun.com (below) doesn't do it justice. There are 6 distinct hills — a couple of them particularly long and steep by my standards. They appear in two clumps spread over about 3 miles, leaving a final flat 1½ miles as a warm-down. I've run this route several times over the years, but not recently. What was notable about today is that it's the first time ever I've run the entire way without having to take a walk break — or to just stop for a breather.

The first incline is particularly severe, and I nearly didn't make it. I don't recall ever fighting for breath like this before. I was filling my lungs, but it didn't seem to be quite enough. Despite the struggle, I made it up without stopping, before an equally steep downward slope gave me another set of problems. The surprising thing was that as I continued, instead of feeling weaker and gloomier, I seemed to be gaining strength and confidence. By miles 5 and 6, I knew that nothing was going to stop me getting round without a break.

It was a stunning vindication for the gym sessions I've been doing. All that stepping and cycling and cross-training during the 22 visits over the past few weeks have made a clear difference. As well as strengthening muscles ignored by normal running on the flat, they've made me fitter: increasing endurance and stamina. Today's run was the first opportunity to prove it. Best of all was the feeling that, as I finished, I knew I could have gone on to do more. I read enviously of people finishing a run with "more in the tank". It's something I've rarely experienced.

I won't embellish or analyse this further. I just want to record that it's the best run I've had in a long time. I can't think of a better one since Zurich in April 2006.

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Sunday 30 November 2008 — 11.02 miles

Loads of stuff to babble about.

Here's an interesting read: How Oprah ruined the marathon. It made me think – perhaps too much. I was even tempted to allow it to depress me slightly, but I read some of the responses, and was once again cheered.

My week followed a faintly similar pattern. After the boost of last Saturday's run, and a hearty hour in the gym the next day, I was once again drawn, moth-like, to the flaming pub on Monday night, and to the well-concealed thrills of Wigan v Everton. Later, at home, I sought contemplative solace in the cheeseboard and wine rack.

Fun while it was lasted, but it was always going to be For One Night Only. And it was. It's the fall-out that lingers, and gets in the way. So Monday and Tuesday were blank-calendar days as far as running goes. This time, I chose not to batter myself in public, but to lie low for a day or two, and quietly re-sync by mid-week. I was back out there on Wednesday for 3½ workmanlike miles, repeated on Friday. Sandwiched between them, another sweaty hour in the gym.

And yesterday? Yesterday was a repeat of my hilly run of last Saturday, but with knobs on. The aim was 9 or 9½ miles, but I ended up banking a startling 11.02 miles. The distance was gratifying, but the experience wasn't quite as uplifting as last weekend's outing. There was no wintry sunshine to gild the puddles along the canal towpath, and spread a little extra warmth through the running universe.

Again, I left my music at home. Various reasons:

Safety. Only the first and the last mile of this route is on roads with a pavement. There's a long central stretch that is narrow, twisting lanes. To run without being able to hear the occasional cars, and without total concentration, would literally be suicide.

Declutter. For long weekend runs, I have to take extra stuff on board to ward off the runner's demons. A water-belt with large bottle of sweet fluid; and something carbohydraulic to nibble on. This week, for the first time in more than a year, I wore my heart-rate monitor chest strap. And then there's all the usual stuff: GPS watch, phone and keys and 'just in case' money. It's enough to organise all this stuff, without adding superfluous body clutter. I find the more complex the preparations are for a run, and the longer it takes me to get sorted, the greater the sense of techno-claustrophobia, and the less likely the run will work. Leading on from that is...

Purity. Running is supposed to be simple and natural. It's one of the things that draws us to it. Apart from the logistical inconvenience of arranging it all, excessive running luggage destroys the innocence at the heart of this activity.

Race practice. One of the purposes of a long run is to prepare for long races. As we all know... wearing an iPod in a race is a catastrophic blow against good running etiquette, and shrivels the runner into nothing but a pre-programmed, glassy-eyed robot with painfully sharp elbows and a bad attitude. So if a long run is a rehearsal, why should I wear one? (I probably won't always stick to this, but I need to be accustomed to it.)

Er, that's it...

Here are some often-seen training slogans that I will nod in agreement at, but never actually follow:

Less is more
Quality not quantity
Make each session count
Run smarter, not harder

... You know the sort of thing.

It's time to give them a go. I've been reading a lot recently about FIRST, the programme created by the Furman Institute– a college in South Carolina that I suspect no one had ever heard of until they publicised the results of their running research. The pivotal notion is that a marathon training plan need consist of only three runs a week, rather than the usual 4 or 5. Not only that, but the claim is that times are likely to be improved, because there's less danger of injury and overtaining, and greater motivation from fewer, better quality runs. The three days are topped up with another two (sometimes three) of cross-training. Another vital ingredient is to increase the intensity of the sessions: one interval, one tempo, and one long run that's faster than usual.

I'm going to try it out. It's been on the radar for weeks, but I needed proof that I'd be able to do it justice. I think I can. After nine weeks of preliminary, or base, training, I've decided I'm definitely up for the Boston Marathon in April, and that I'm definitely up for having a proper crack at improving. I'll avoid the traditional RunningCommentary bluster that's dumped so much egg on my face in recent years. This time feels different. A variety of reasons contribute to this feeling, but the main practical one is that I've managed to maintain my interest in the gym. I've not just managed to keep going, but I've started to look forward to it. This morning, less than 24 hours after my 11 miles, I couldn't wait to get round to the gym for my usual 50 or 60 minutes of sweaty cardio-vascular. It was my 24th visit in 9 weeks: an average of more than 2½ sessions per week. The extra training effect is a boost to motivation and momentum. I feel fitter and more enthusiastic. It's become a routine that will fit in nicely with the Furman FIRST plan, that calls for regular cross training to separate the three runs.

Oh god, I've become a training bore. That's all I'll say about this for the moment.

Other big news of the week (for me) is that I've finally been able to move on to volume 4 of A Dance to the Music of Time. My attempt to read the 12-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell is just as much a saga as the work itself. I read volume 1 in Sicily last year, and number 2 a few months later. It's the third volume that's been problematical. I started reading it in Estonia about 3 months ago, but managed to lose it somewhere. I didn't want to have to buy it again, so I've spent the last 3 months popping into London bookshops on a Saturday afternoon, and reading as many pages as I could before I had to get off to the match. It was a slow process. Last week, we were in Bournemouth for a few days. We went to see M's faves, the Mighty Boosh, and decided to hang on for a couple of days. This gave me the perfect opportunity. While M shopped, I spent two complete afternoons in Borders, drinking decent coffee and polishing off part 3 of the cycle. So this week, it's on to the 4th volume. Books 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are said to be the best, so I'm thoroughly excited. The first hundred pages have lived up their exalted billing.

Another news item: Garmin have come up trumps. I've been critical of these fellows more than once, but this week they redeemed themselves. I'd had an intermittent power problem with my Forerunner 305 for some weeks. Rather like its owner, it would flare into life, then switch off again during a run. Expecting to hear a chorus of cackling geeks demanding a 3-figure sum to repair it, I put off phoning Garmin until Monday of this week, by which time the thought of another disrupted run had finally become worse than the thought of those cackling geeks.

Much to my surprise, what I found was a helpful, friendly guy who reassured me that despite the watch being several centuries old, they would be happy to replace it free of charge as it was "probably part of a faulty batch". Fearful that he might change his mind, I croaked my gratitude and ran to the post office at a pace that would have got me to Beijing this year. Just 4 days later, a brand new Forerunner 305 arrives by registered post. Thank you, Garmin.

And thank you, Oprah.

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